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I had all this, but the thing I didn’t? Privacy.
I pulled the hair net onto my head and the thin gloves onto my hands. I yanked a pot from the sink with the indelible mark and set to scrubbing. And before I knew it, I stumbled.
I stumbled, and just like that, the song was already there, just waiting for me to find it.
“A thousand years, I’ll cryo-sleep without you. Set your sight on my path, I doubt myself without you.
“Do tell me to, sing true that forgone art, set a course for my heart, set a course for my heart.”
The melody took me to a forlorn and soft-tempered place within my mind. I was unreachable at that moment. The melody demanded my focus to bring it into the world. When I finished, I was in that glowy place sacred to all artists.
I reached for another silver pot, feeling the weight of another thankless task pull me back to reality. Then I heard him.
“I don’t know that one,” he said. He startled me. It was all I could do to keep from clubbing him with the pot in my hand.
I shot back, taking the breath that had lodged itself in my mouth and gulping. Good thing I didn’t smack him. He was none other than Draven, my notorious Vinduthi boss.
“I’m sorry?” I said, still reeling from the interruption.
“I said I don’t know that one.”
I gulped. “No one does. I wrote it just now.”
“You wrote that?” He looked almost angry. I had no way of knowing what the information meant to him and waited there for an answer while he rubbed his chin in silence.
“Could you sing like that in front of people?” he asked out of nowhere.
“I guess I could. I never tried,” I admitted. “I can’t make any promises that I’d be good in front of people.”
“There’s only one way to find out, then,” he said, grabbing my wrist and dragging me away from the sink.
Teril popped her head out, ready to demand an answer from me for abandoning my post, but Draven threw his hand up. “This one’s coming with me. I’ll handle the change of assignment paperwork.”
That was it. Those were the words that shot me, in a matter of hours, into a whole new existence. Draven already owned my contract, the piece of paper that held me to Thodos III as an indentured servant, so there was no arguing. I’d do whatever he told me. I had no choice.
Not that I wanted to argue at being told that from now on, I’d get to be pampered to sing rather than scrub dishes. Still, it was too surreal. Just like those voices I’d heard growing up, I was doubtful that anyone’s life could unfold like that. Especially mine. It was too much. Too much like a musical.
Yet when he threw me into a salon chair ten minutes later and I felt the rush of cold water against my scalp, I had to admit it was starting to look like my luck was changing. Maybe in a big way. I had no way of knowing.
The gown he picked out for me felt strange on my skin, nothing like what I had long grown used to on the station. At first, it was scratchy, but after seeing myself in the mirror, it was funny how those discomforts faded.
“Now,” he said. “You look like a singer.”
I could hardly disagree. The hairdresser gave me a sophisticated side ponytail with curls set into my brown hair that cascaded down the side of my chest. I saw myself in smoky eyeliner that set off my green eyes in a striking way that made me almost a stranger to myself.
Draven dropped me at the bar twenty minutes later while he went to introduce the idea to the rest of the Vinduthi bosses. I stood back, fingering the drink in my hand, too terrified to move.
I hung on to every discernible word until I heard him call for me.
As I walked toward them, dread set in a whole new way I’d never felt before. It was easy to see why, looking at the six intimidating men who sat in the V.I.P. section of the lounge.
“Boys,” he said as I met them at the table. “This is Serena Winchell. Our new lounge singer. I’ll also have her do some crowd work on fight nights. What do you think?”
Of course, my dread was well met. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Work the crowd. Work the crowd? It was just another style of rebranded prostitution, like so many for human girls on Thodos III. How could I have been so naive?
“Serena,” he said, looking at his friends. “This is the team. We’ve got Laux. Pit boss around here, he looks after the gaming tables.” He nodded with a careful glare.
“This is Ryrik, our head of entertainment. Consider him your boss when I’m not around.” Ryrik looked as though he needed convincing that I was up to the job. I hardly knew if I was. I was still pinching myself trying to settle on whether or not things were even real.
